Data preservation at the Fermilab Tevatron

The Fermilab Tevatron collider's data-taking run ended in September 2011, yielding a dataset with rich scientific potential. The CDF and DO experiments each have nearly 9 PB of collider and simulated data stored on tape. A large computing infrastructure consisting of tape storage, disk cache, and distributed grid computing for physics analysis with the Tevatron data is present at Fermilab. The Fermilab Run II data preservation project intends to keep this analysis capability sustained through the year 2020 or beyond. To achieve this, we are implementing a system that utilizes virtualization, automated validation, and migration to new standards in both software and data storage technology as well as leveraging resources available from currently-running experiments at Fermilab. Furthermore, these efforts will provide useful lessons in ensuring long-term data access for numerous experiments throughout high-energy physics, and provide a roadmap for high-quality scientific output for years to come.